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Publishers’ Forum 2012

Publishers’ Forum 2012

The 9th Publishers’ Forum took place in the axica in Berlin from 23-24 April, under the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate. 310 participants discussed subjects such as creativity and agile workflows, semantics, copyright, change management, undiscovered potential and transforming customer expectations. The discussion was particularly intensive on Twitter as well this year.

The first day of the 2012 Publishers’ Forum was defined by terms like “imagine”, “improvise” and “agile workflows”. Brian O’Leary, Anna von Veh and other speakers encouraged the participants to use creativity and new perspectives to reposition themselves strategically. “Context” was also a keyword, in connection with the question of whether that which surrounds content might not become more important than the content itself.

To a large extent, the subject of semantics governed the second day. Dr. Sören Auer, Bastiaan Deblieck, Christian Dirschl, Daniel Meyer, Prof. Dr. Heiko Beier and others proposed theoretical and practical approaches to the subject. It became clear that semantics is no longer a distant issue. Thomson Reuters (Open Calais) and Wolters Kluwer (Jurion) have already implemented related technologies in a concrete fashion.

The Forum also dealt with pressing questions of copyright, the evolving challenges to the organization of knowledge in businesses (Prof. Dr. Frank Schönefeld, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions) and developments in change management – subjects which place the focus on publishing employees. “Buried treasures”, this is how Alioscha Walser described the unused potential to be found in unexploited data or unseen possibilities for cooperation with companies outside the realms of publishing.

As Helmut von Berg put it in his closing remarks: “These presentations have shown: It is true that we have to start with ourselves, because this digital revolution is taking place inside us, in our businesses, not somewhere else. When we close ourselves off from this realization, then we close ourselves off from important new ideas about how we can adjust our corporate behavior or our business models to development in our society – because we remain stuck on our mistakes or our lack of imagination.”

At the end of the conference, Helmut also pointed to the necessity of openness, trust and cooperation, because, as he believes, nobody can succeed alone in the rapidly changing, digital world. Kathrin Passig had emphasized that, in her view, pure sales arguments will not be enough for publishers and booksellers in the future. On the same note, Helmut emphasized that, “your customers have to be convinced that you are offering them the worthwhile use of content – I don’t want to say ‘products’. The customer is the benchmark of what we are doing.”

Accompanying a Forum that was active and open – above all via the embedded Twitter feed – was a new, interactive website design.